Start with a simple sentence:
Mei broke the vase.
Now:
It was Mei who broke the vase.
The event is still:
someone broke the vase.
What changed?
The second sentence places strong focus on Mei.
Perhaps someone blamed Arun. Perhaps the listener asked, “Who broke it?” Perhaps the speaker is correcting a misunderstanding.
The grammar has reorganised the message.
Cambridge Grammar calls this a cleft sentence.
Cleft sentences do not necessarily add a new event. They change which part of the event the reader or listener is asked to treat as key information.
Why ordinary word order is sometimes not enough
English already has stress and intonation in speech.
A speaker can say:
MEI broke the vase.
Writing cannot reproduce speech stress perfectly.
A cleft gives grammar a way to mark focus explicitly:
It was Mei who broke the vase.
The structure turns emphasis into syntax.
Clefts connect old and new information
Cambridge Grammar explains that cleft sentences are used especially in speaking to connect what is already understood with what is new to the listener.
Example:
It was Nina’s car that got broken into.
Background:
a car got broken into.
Corrective focus:
Nina’s car.
This is why clefts belong beside given/new information.
The basic it-cleft pattern
A common pattern is:
It + be + focus + relative-like clause.
Examples:
It was Mei who called.
It was yesterday that Mei called.
It was from the library that she called.
The same event can be clefted around different elements.
Clefting reveals what the speaker is correcting
Question:
Did Arun submit the report?
Answer:
No. It was Mei who submitted it.
Correction: person.
Question:
Did Mei submit it on Monday?
Answer:
No. It was Tuesday that she submitted it.
Correction: time.
Cleft grammar maps directly onto contrast.
Information focus is not emotional drama
Students sometimes think:
cleft sentence = dramatic sentence.
Not necessarily.
It was the second experiment that produced the clearest result.
The structure can be calm and analytical. Focus is informational before it is emotional.
Cleft sentences can imply exclusion
It was Mei who solved the problem.
In many contexts, this suggests Mei rather than another candidate is the relevant solver.
Clefts can therefore sound more exclusive than neutral sentences.
This is why they should not be inserted casually.
Compare neutral and cleft versions
Neutral:
The design failed because of poor testing.
Cleft:
It was poor testing that caused the design to fail.
The cleft strongly foregrounds poor testing.
If several causes contributed, that focus might imply too much exclusivity.
Grammar and reasoning meet.
It-clefts are useful for correction
It was your sister that I met, not your mother.
The listener already understands that someone in the family was met. The focused element replaces the mistaken assumption.
It-clefts are useful for contrast
It was the timing, not the cost, that caused the problem.
Two possible explanations exist. One is selected.
This can be powerful in argumentative writing, but the evidence must justify the selection.
It-clefts can focus place and time
It was in Singapore that the company first tested the system.
It was only after the second trial that the error became visible.
The structure can make a place or time boundary the key information.
“It was not until…” creates delayed focus
It was not until midnight that the last train arrived.
The core event is simple: the train arrived at midnight.
The cleft adds a sense that midnight was later than expected or noteworthy.
Wh-clefts organise focus differently
Another common pattern is the wh-cleft or pseudo-cleft.
What I need is a quiet room.
The structure divides the message into:
what I need
and:
a quiet room.
The focused answer appears after is.
Compare neutral, it-cleft and wh-cleft
I need a quiet room.
It is a quiet room that I need.
What I need is a quiet room.
All three share a core proposition. The information packaging differs.
Wh-clefts can foreground actions too
What we need to do is check the evidence again.
Background:
we need to do something.
Focus:
check the evidence again.
This can be useful in explanations, presentations and recommendations.
Reversed wh-clefts exist too
A quiet room is what I need.
The focused element appears first.
Students do not need every subtype immediately. The main reading skill is to identify what the structure foregrounds.
Current research treats clefts as focus-marking structures
Recent 2025 linguistic work on non-canonical English syntax and cleft constructions continues to analyse clefts as structures that foreground one element while backgrounding other information.
The technical theories differ. The classroom-level common ground is clear:
clefts reorganise the sentence so one constituent becomes focal.
Clefts work naturally in corrective contexts
Recent experimental work shows that clefts can work especially naturally when a discourse contains an identifiable candidate or mistaken identification.
This fits everyday corrections:
No, it was Mei who called.
The listener already has part of the event and needs the correct identity filled in.
Clefts can improve analytical writing when the contrast is real
Weak:
The policy failed because of timing and cost.
If evidence strongly shows timing was decisive:
It was the timing, rather than the total cost, that caused the greatest difficulty.
The cleft has a reason to exist.
Clefts can improve Science explanation
It was temperature that had the strongest effect on the reaction rate.
The structure makes the variable selection explicit.
Clefts can improve History explanation
It was the second reform that changed public opinion most sharply.
The structure answers:
Which reform mattered most?
Clefts can improve comprehension
A passage says:
It was the loss of trust that finally broke the alliance.
The cleft is a structural clue. Loss of trust has been foregrounded.
This is grammar functioning as comprehension evidence.
Clefts can become empty sophistication
It is education that is important for students.
Grammatical, but perhaps unnecessary.
Neutral:
Education is important for students.
The advanced structure needs an information problem to solve.
Use a cleft when there is a hidden question
Ask:
What question is this cleft answering?
Example:
It was Mei who solved the problem.
Hidden question:
Who solved it?
If no useful hidden question exists, the cleft may be unnecessary.
Clefts and presupposition
It was Mei who broke the vase.
The sentence tends to present someone broke the vase as backgrounded, while Mei is the new focal identification.
This connects clefts to presupposition and given/new information.
Clefts and scope words
It was only Mei who submitted on time.
Only makes exclusivity explicit.
This is stronger than:
Mei submitted on time.
Students should track how clefting combines with only, not and even.
A practical cleft-reading method
- Recover the neutral proposition.
- Identify the background.
- Identify the focused element.
- Ask what contrast or correction is implied.
- Check whether exclusivity is explicit or only suggested.
A practical writing method
Before using a cleft:
- Ask the hidden question: who, what, when, where or why?
- Put the answer in focus.
- Check whether neutral syntax would be clearer.
Advanced grammar should solve a communication problem.
Parent-friendly practice
Start with:
Arun found the key.
Focus person:
It was Arun who found the key.
Focus object:
It was the key that Arun found.
Then ask what changed. The event remained similar; the reader’s attention moved.
Teacher-friendly diagnosis
Focus mismatch: wrong element foregrounded.
No communicative need: cleft inserted only to sound advanced.
Background error: supposedly given information not established.
Exclusivity overclaim: one factor made to sound uniquely decisive.
Connector error: who/that structure unstable.
Overuse: repeated clefts make prose heavy.
Singapore relevance
Secondary English students often need to correct misunderstandings, compare causes, identify decisive evidence, emphasise one detail, give presentations and analyse writer emphasis.
Cleft sentences provide a precise grammatical tool for those jobs.
The goal is not to make every sentence advanced. It is to make focus deliberate.
Hilary Mantel as a high-level literary lens
Hilary Mantel is useful here only as a high-level lesson in perspective. A scene can contain many facts. The writer decides which fact arrives as foreground and which remains background.
The transferable lesson is:
attention is structured.
AI and cleft overproduction
AI can make prose sound formal by generating It is X that… repeatedly.
A useful audit is:
For every cleft sentence, identify the focused element and backgrounded proposition. State what contrast or correction justifies the cleft. If none exists, rewrite in neutral word order.
Connections eduKateAI can learn
neutral proposition → cleft transformation → focused constituent
backgrounded proposition → given/shared information
cleft focus → correction / contrast / identification
it-cleft → focus before that/who clause
wh-cleft → open proposition + focused answer
cleft + only → stronger exclusivity claim
The public principle is that cleft syntax reorganises information so one element becomes focal while the rest of the proposition is treated as background.
Related eduKateSG resources
Research basis
This article draws on current Cambridge Grammar guidance and recent 2025 research on cleft constructions, non-canonical syntax, learner corpora and corrective discourse contexts.